THE NEW YOR.KER. They have a cheerful, fatalistic view of life and death. One of their songs goes, 'There is one great thing, the only thing, to live to see the great day dawning.' Death isn't frightening, it's mysterious. lyonamut means 'It can't be helped, there's no changing it.' If your father died, an Eskimo would come and weep with you and say 'lyonamut.' If it could have been helped, that's different; an Eski- mo would say 'Nelunuktvingalook'- 'That's a difficulty for me.' When Oshaweetok's wife died, four years ago, we sent John, who is his godson, to say 'lyonamut.' Most Eskimos are reluctant to commit themselves, to put forth an opinion. They take their cue from you. If an Eskimo meets someóne who doesn't seem worthwhile, he says, 'What a waste of time!' If an Eskimo is angry, he doesn't stay to fight, he slides out of your life. They try to keep gossip kindly, they make only very subtle digs, because they have to rely on each other. Eskimo stories are based on truth as well as myth. It is such a small society that in order to prevent feuds it has been necessary to mythicize true events by turning human beings into animals, say, before handing the story down." ^ CCORDING to Alice Houston, .n. the Houstons might well have a sampler over the mantelpiece reading: Let man wear the fell of the lion, woman the fleece of the sheep. These lines of William Blake's are basic to her husband's modus vivendi. In the Houston household, the man brings home the bacon and, whenever possible, the fish, game, and venison; the woman does everything else except chew the boots. Houston around the house is a feminist joke. ("Now, let me see. Where do you think she keeps the silver?") He takes things as they come, however; there is no grousing. He is not one to fuss about what he eats or where he sleeps. If he s asked how he manages when his wife is away, he may say, "Oh, I eat hamburgers, Rice Kris- pies, any old thing, throwing the bones in the corner, laughing and singing," but in fact he eats tuna fish out of the can (usually standing at the counter), fortified with tea and toast, his two culinary accomplishments. He seems not to carry around the bag of worries that the rest of us do. He doesn't read the newspapers (but does watch televi- sion news while drawing constantly), and he doesn't open his bank state- ments. When it comes to fears, he travels light. He doesn't worry about things over which he has no control, and these include illness and death. Five years ago, he got shingles, and he still has them. The only outward sign of the pain is that he sometimes sits holding his side, like Napoleon. In 1984, he had a mitral-valve repair, and that's the end of any conversation about it. He hates anything to do with medical matters, and feels that one should rise above one's physical infir- mities. He's not sure whether this is the Scotch Presbyterian influence or the Eskimo influence. One has the feeling that if he lost every thing- house, money, family wiped out by an act of God-he would weep, say "lyonamut," rig up a little packing-box house, eat tuna fish out of the can, and get on with it. Any fears he has are reserved for the Eskimos and the Indians. "If you ever meet a white man or woman who tells you they have a solution to the Eskimo or Indian problems in North America, tell them to go away," he says. He considers that in the nineteen-fifties relations between whites and Indians and Eskimos in Canada were excellent. "So then all of a sudden in the sixties some young guys-failed lawyers and the like, young guys on the run from war-come along and decide to get in the act and start ferment. This Inuit business was all got going by young whites who wanted to become politi- cally prominent in the Eskimo world. Eskimos never got into the discussion. It was started by young Turks who wanted a show of power: 'At least we can make the whites stop calling these people Eskimos.' There's this perfect 45 word, 'Eskimo,' an Indian word be- lieved, arguably, to mean 'eater of raw meat' and certainly not an insult-they still call their co-op the West Baffin Eskimo Co-op. When we say 'Inuit,' we usually use it incorrectly. It means 'the people.' White asses didn't do any better by the Indians. A lot of the hippies who arrived in the Queen Charlottes turned into environmental- ists. They appeal to the Haidas' pride -it all sounds good-and speak through the Indians to the govern- ment. The Indians have a saying: 'As the tide goes out, the table is set.' The Northwest Coast Indians lived off the country and the sea. They cut down trees and built their lodges; there was also copper and gold mining. Around 1961, MacMillan Bloedel, a Canadian logging company, came along, and hired a lot of these guys. Then the environmentalists decided to blow the whistle, and all hell broke loose. With growing help from the Haidas, to- gether they've managed to turn all of the southern Charlottes into one vast provincial tourist park, with no further logging or mining permitted. This is presented as returning the land to the Indians. The problem is that a good many Indian and non-Indian families there have relied on logging for their living. The trees there are largely sec- ond growth anyway, not virgin forest. And not only is the forest no longer virgin but, because of the islands' cli- mate, trees grow at a rapid rate. It's an almost perfect environment: all that's necessary is controlled cutting and har- vesting, and careful reforestation. So, once again, the Haidas are screwed. The less people know about the subject, the more they're apt to pile into the Eskimos and the Indians. 'They get some money and spend it all on booze!' -that kind of thing." Houston is not as worried about al- cohol as he is about the school system in the Arctic. "On the one hand, we're teaching a whole people to deculturate themselves and become like us. On the other, we're asking them to fight us off culturally, to maintain their Es- kimoness. I started messing things up back in 1952 when I told them my wife was going out with me to teach their children the three R's. First, there were five students, then eight, and now we've come to this impasse. At that moment, the Eskimos took on this new philosophy: we'll give our children to the teacher and see what happens. But